Mr. Speaker, I am sure all members in the House appreciate the broad array of backstop programs that are provided to seniors and those on fixed incomes but the thrust of the NDP's motion is aimed at those who are not making, what I would describe, which I think is accurate, a minimum fair wage.
In region after region, charitable organizations, like the United Way, have done an analysis that indicates that the gap in the general market basket, so to speak, the food basket for those who are at minimum wage, is widening. The ability to even get food is requiring the working poor to go to food banks across the country. Surely that is anathema to us in our civil society.
The member and his party have articulated the relevance of the guaranteed annual income supplement as it applies to seniors. Would he feel that it would be a more equitable approach, notwithstanding the validity of the approach taken by the NDP in my mind, to look at that kind of mechanism, a guaranteed annual wage, in particular as it would work through the taxation system, the linkage of which his party is very much in favour of, that would work toward the introduction of that kind of universal, right through the taxation system for the working poor?